UP: Female hand pump technicians are heroes of parched villages in Koroan

ALLAHABAD (UP): Seventeen-year-old Pushpa had to drop out of school after Class V, because her native Baithakwa village under Koraon block of the Allahabad district in UP didn’t have easy access to potable water. As the hand pump near her house lay defunct for months, she had to trek to a neighbouring village and brave abuses to fetch water.
Pushpa was not alone in her ordeal. The parched blocks of Koraon, Shankargarh and Bara have compelled dozens of girls like her to forego education and do what was needed to be done for survival.
On the eve of World Environment Day, there is a precious drop of hope for dozens of villages in these three blocks and beyond, courtesy Pragati Gramodyog Sansthan. The nonprofit, which had convened a Kishori Samuh in April and gauged the challenges adolescent girls like Pushpa faced, decided to train teens of Koraon in hand pump repair.
“In the beginning, everyone was sceptical. We were told girls cannot do a mechanic’s job. Well, we proved them wrong,” said Pushpa who is now team leader of a group of 10 female hand pump technicians.
Depleting groundwater never keeps them out of job. The group not only repairs defunct pumps in their respective villages, but also receives work orders from far and wide. They know how to fix cracked pipes and washer problems. “We charge between Rs 400 and Rs 1,000 depending on the job,” said Manju, a member of the group.
Professor Sunit Singh of GB Pant Institute of Social Sciences, Jhunsi — the man behind Pragati Gramodyog Sansthan — said he felt sympathising was not enough after hearing out the troubles the teenagers faced. “We invested some money to buy tool kits and trained adolescent girls on how to use them,” he said.
Counsellor Akansha Srivastava said the kits were stored in an equipment bank. “Whenever a girl is called for repairing a defunct hand pump, she borrows a kit and returns the same after the job is done,” Srivastava added.
Knowledge is power, which the water girls of Koraon are happily willing to share. They will soon train a group of teens in Sonbarsa village of Shankargarh block, which is also grappling with water crisis.